History Main / MagicFloppyDisk

* At one point in Literature/{{Skyway}} trilogy by John [=DeChancie=] (basically, about [[SpaceTruckers truckers]] InSpace) the protagonists receive a floppy disk with a map of interstellar PortalNetwork, which is obviously too big to fit on a floppy. Justified by the disk being a device made by SufficientlyAdvancedAliens (possibly humans from far future) in a way [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith to make it easier to interface with human computers]]. Most of human technology in the novels isn't far beyond 1980s, save for Earth-Pluto passenger transports and [[ETGaveUsWiFi licensed alien technology]] used to manufacture wheels of the trucks that drive through [[PortalDoor portals]].

* In ''Series/RedDwarf'', a sci-fi comedy show taking place on a futuristic mining vessel, people still use videocassettes...except they're triangular. It is explained in the 2009 Easter special that [=DVDs=] have become outdated by videos, since videos have one precious advantage--you can put them back in the box with minimal risk of breaking them. Plus they're bigger, and thus harder to lose. In "Bodyswap" we see Lister's mind being downloaded onto a Microcassette (the sort used in voicemail systems) though this is PlayedForLaughs.

* In ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'', the careful observer will notice a strange dissonance. Shinji has his cassette tape often, and at the same time Unit 05's OS is shown to use [[ShownTheirWork at least 250 terabytes of memory]]. The second film explained this by having the tape player originally belong to Gendo who is conceivably old enough to have used it but it's a bit of a stretch. Shinji keeps it as long as he has because it is one of, maybe, half a dozen items or ideas that mean [[JerkAss his father]] loves him. This may account for his never upgrading to anything newer. The Second Impact is a likely partial reason for the "old" technology. When the world is suffering from a major catastrophe and millions are dead, consumer electronics take a back seat to other priorities. Similarly, Asuka is sometimes shown playing games on a Creator/{{Bandai}} Usefulnotes/WonderSwan, a handheld console that was discontinued in 2003 in the real world.

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'', being made in Japan mid-TheNineties, uses the much, much cooler-looking than floppies [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_disc MO disc]], which still have the same basic recognizable shape. In the UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube remake, these MO discs were inserted into ''customized Game Cubes''.

* ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'' had the operating systems for HumongousMecha stored on a single floppy. One factory producing said mecha stored its backups on ''thousands'' of them.

* Justified in ''Series/NedsDeclassifiedSchoolSurvivalGuide''; the school pictures being taken on film were a PlotPoint when [[strike:Urkel]] Cookie planned to hack the camera to upload a better picture of himself.

* The limited disk space was spoofed in some Creator/{{Sierra}} adventure games - self-spoof, actually, as many of their games in their golden age fit on well over half a dozen floppies. Most spoofing of all was ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers'' (1991); the plot was based upon a future civilization finding the missing ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry IV'' floppies (another Sierra in-joke), and attempting to play them on their MasterComputer, with disastrous results. In another scene, the protagonist can go in a future game shop, and find a copy of ''[[VideoGame/KingsQuest King's Quest]] [[RidiculousFutureSequelisation 48]]'', which boasted a 12GB size (at a time when 20''MB'' was considered too much disk space, seen in a review of the next year's ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVIHeirTodayGoneTomorrow''). Finally, the very end required the player to download an entire personality on a 3½" floppy disk (pictured above) that had lots of other stuff on it too. Some of that "other stuff" includes a game called "Stunt Flyer" and a "Brain Tools" program. Incidentally, the main supercomputer seen before has Space Quest IV installed, and deleting that promptly closes the real thing that you're playing.

* {{Invoked}} in ''VideoGame/DeusExMankindDivided''. There's has a side-mission where you have to recover a floppy drive and a reader, but in-universe descriptions and emails state it's actually quite of a retro technology that has grown in popularity since their advantage of secrecy due to the rarity of working drive readers. [[spoiler:The side mission reveals the floppy drive has the memory of AI Eliza Cassan.]]

* The limited disk space was spoofed in some Creator/{{Sierra}} adventure games - self-spoof, actually, as many of their games in their golden age fit on well over half a dozen floppies. Most spoofing of all was ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers'' (1991); the plot was based upon a future civilization finding the ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry IV'' missing floppies (another Sierra in-joke), and attempting to play them on their MasterComputer, with disastrous results. In another scene, the protagonist can go in a future game shop, and find a copy of ''[[VideoGame/KingsQuest King's Quest]] 48'', which boasted a 12GB size. (There was once upon a time a review that criticized ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVIHeirTodayGoneTomorrow'' (1992) for using too much disk space. It required... 20MB) Finally, the very end required the player to download an entire personality on a 3½" floppy disk (pictured above) that had lots of other stuff on it too. Some of that "other stuff" includes a game called "Stunt Flyer" and a "Brain Tools" program. Incidentally, the main supercomputer seen before has Space Quest IV installed, and deleting that promptly closes the real thing that you're playing.

* In ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'', the careful observer will notice a strange dissonance. Shinji has his cassette tape often, and at the same time Unit 05's OS is shown to use [[ShownTheirWork at least 250 terabytes of memory]]. The second film explained this by having the tape player originally belong to Gendo who is conceivably old enough to have used it but it's a bit of a stretch. Shinji keeps it as long as he has because it is one of, maybe, half a dozen items or ideas that mean [[JerkAss his father]] loves him. This may account for his never upgrading to anything newer. The Second Impact is a likely partial reason for the "old" technology. When the world is suffering from a major catastrophe and millions are dead, consumer electronics take a back seat to other priorities. Similarly, Asuka is sometimes shown playing games on a Creator/{{Bandai}} Usefulnotes/{{Wonderswan}}, a handheld console that was discontinued in 2003 in the real world.

* In ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'', the careful observer will notice a strange dissonance. Shinji has his cassette tape often, and at the same time Unit 05's OS is shown to use [[ShownTheirWork at least 250 terabytes of memory]]. The second film explained this by having the tape player originally belong to Gendo who is conceivably old enough to have used it but it's a bit of a stretch. Shinji keeps it as long as he has because it is one of, maybe, half a dozen items or ideas that mean [[JerkAss his father]] loves him. This may account for his never upgrading to anything newer. The Second Impact is a likely partial reason for the "old" technology. When the world is suffering from a major catastrophe and millions are dead, consumer electronics take a back seat to other priorities.

** Ditto for early Macs, as in the [[TheEighties early 80es]], when both first appeared, hard drives were considered a rare and expensive upgrade, costing thousands and used only by the dedicated professionals who needed to store and process huge amounts of information — [[TechnologyMarchesOn say, 10 or 20]] ''[[TechnologyMarchesOn mega]]''[[TechnologyMarchesOn bytes]]. Most people made do with floppies even at the workplace, and for the home computers floppy drives were in the same league that the [=HDDs=] were for the workplace machines. Up until the Macintosh II and Macintosh SE that introduced internal HDD bays, the only way to avoid booting from the floppy (that must've contained the system image, so the space for everything else was quite limited, given that first Mas floppies only held 400K) was to use the clumsy and slow[[note]]especially before the Mac Plus introducing a SCSI port[[/note]] external HDD — or buy an expensive Macintosh XL workstation, which was more of a Lisa anyway.

** Likewise, video editing programs will usually have a film projector or a reel of film as their icons, when these fell out of common use outside movie theaters once the VCR was invented (and even then, film stock would be reduced to a niche medium among filmmakers following the rise of digital cinema in the late 2000's).

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation literally has [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-335 150 Magic Floppy Disks]] that contain ''the entire internet''. Only the first twelve [[TheInternetIsForPorn contain pornography]], though, which shows something of an unusual optimism on the part of the writer.

[[folder:Film]]